Rekindling a dream

Hyderabad: An incident in Kukatpally on July 9 this year prompted IT engineer Taskeen Fatima Basha’s family to start the GM Foundation, a charitable Trust named after her maternal grandfather, Ghulam Mohiuddin, almost immediately. The Trust has adopted a school for special children, which was left in a lurch after the owner of the school “just disappeared”.

Kausar Jahan, Taskeen’s aunt, tells us: “I was the principal and a special education teacher at this school, which we now call ‘Happy Home’. On July 9, at around 7.30 am, the driver of the school van called me up and said, ‘Ma’am, the school, classes... everything is locked. The owner is not picking up his phone either’. By 9.30 am, I reached the school so did many parents. After some time, officials from a bank showed up and took away the school van.”

It turned out that the owner had taken lakhs in cash from people and had fled to his native place in AP. Everything else in the school, which offered primary, secondary and vocational courses to 60 students, was intact. While creditors showed up at the school gate, Kausar was more worried about the future of the 60 kids. who had, after years of teaching, “started identifying objects and washing hands on their own”.

So, her husband, Azam Mohiuddin, mother-in-law Kaneez Fatima and her niece Taskeen, in their capacities as trustees of GM Foundation, took over the responsibility of the students, aged three to 38. For two months, classes ran out of a one-bedroom flat in the area, as the owner of the previous school building was suspicious of the family’s intention to adopt the school as he too had been cheated.

“But physiotherapy of special children requires a lot of space and this wasn’t helping,” says Taskeen, adding, “Later we convinced the building’s owner. On September 1, we shifted the students to the school, it was like home-coming.”

Azam says, “Call it the goodwill of our family, money hasn’t been a big issue so far. I am the director of a P.G. College, my sister, Kaneez is the HR in-charge of a degree college and Taskeen is a techie. Our friends know us and our intentions, so they have been donating Rs 5,000, Rs15,000, Rs 49,000 from time to time.”

Taskeen has been making presentations at different corporate houses. Officials from IT firms such as Broadridge and air carrier Indigo have donated money as well as spent time with the children.